


Your Love is Sunlight

by Lanskys



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Worship, Consensual Sex, F/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 12:51:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19085422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanskys/pseuds/Lanskys
Summary: Laura Moon is dying and Mad Sweeney has an idea that just might bring her back.





	Your Love is Sunlight

“I'm dying,” Laura Moon says to him, “For real this time.”

She appears like a ghost in the doorway of his motel room, the darkness lapping at her white limbs. A thin trembling shivers through her form, twitches at the corner of her lips. She hides under her darkest sunglasses, a white scarf knotted loosely over her hair. 

“Is that supposed to be news?”

“I mean my insides,” she says as she stumbles forward into the room, tossing the glasses and scarf aside, “Are fucking liquefying.” She collapses onto the bed, her gaze listlessly trained on the foggy window. “I don't know how much longer I've got.”

What is she looking at?

Nothing.

Mad Sweeney doesn’t have to see her eyes to know they are responding to nothing. Her hands, stiffly, stubbornly clasp at her face, touching dry cheeks with calloused hands in an attempt to forcibly erase the decay from her face.

Dead.

The end has yet to pass, but she is already dead.

Mad Sweeney sits down at the edge of the mattress, his back to her, and he knows it isn’t wise—isn’t a tactically sound position—to bare your back to a woman like her. She does not move, but he can feel her eyes on him. A thousand things sit in the space between them. A thousand accusations and wrongdoings and unsaid things. Guilt pools in the recesses of his mind. 

They have known each other for a very long time, have spent centuries chasing each other. He hasn't told her, maybe she wouldn't even believe him even if he did. Sometimes he feels every year of it at his back, every month, every day, every second. 

A dream of a dream of a dream is what the beginning was. Sweeney doesn’t remember exactly how the old gods created the Earth and the stars and the sun, but it doesn't matter—Laura is always there, since the very beginning.

She is always the same. Always beautiful and slender and terrible with her chin set in opposition to the world, jutted out and proud. Sometimes, she is gentler, kinder, apologetic—sometimes, she's an asshole.

The first time Sweeney saw her, her name was Eorann. She had hair like flame, like war. She'd walked miles from her home to bring him bread; her feet were covered in muck, yet she was still beautiful—perhaps more so.

A woman with mud on her ankles suited him fine, suited him best. She did not shine, and he would not have been willing to be dazzled.

She’d taken his hand and he offered his mouth.

Then one day the sun dawned, red and angry in the east, and she was gone.

And the love left too.

It left. But didn’t die. Love doesn’t die. It closes like a chapter, still existing on the days where it was written but no longer something new, something stretching out beyond the field of vision.

After Essie MacGowan brought him to America, and left him there, he was sure he'd seen the last of that face.

But there she was again in 1918, wearing a green dress and smiling. He smiled and slid up next to her. “Have we met?” he asked. She cupped her cheek in her hand, tilting her face up to his, and said, “I don’t think I’d forget you if we did. You could turn a girl’s head, watching her that way.”

So what if it isn’t precisely love every single time? 

They lack durability, maybe, but not real intimacy. 

When Wednesday had first tasked him with killing Shadow's wife, he didn't think it would make any difference to him. But then he saw her, from behind at first, walking into her house—and there was something to the set of her shoulders that was so familiar he almost rushed out into the open and called out to get her to turn her face back to him, so he could know for sure, but he never needed her to turn around to know. 

“I don't want her to be dead,” he had managed to tell Ostara. “Selfish reasons.” (Laura looks at him, but never speaks of it and he never repeats it, but she’ll remember.)

Sweeney turns his head and looks at her now, the pallid pinks of her skin have been tinged a dull gray, as if watching oil seep from a funnel, but she is still beautiful and familiar, even after all this time.

“Maybe this time will end up just like the last and I'll come right back,” she tells him, every word sounds so sure, so gruff, but Sweeney feels their falsehood ringing in the air, “Although, there might not be much of a body to come back to.”

“Don't worry, dead wife, I'm not gonna let you die.” 

He sees the dull surprise in her features.

“You'd get your coin back though, right?” she shrugs, “Once my flesh comes off my bones and all that. Well, fuck it, I give you permission to just...pull it from my rotten cadaver. And you can skip the hand-holding.” She tries to wet her lips, but her tongue is completely dry. “If we can't find a way to resurrect me, promise me you'll put me out of my fucking misery.”

“Alright.” His hands itch in their emptiness; he longs to have a coin, a cigarette, something. “I need some air.”

He hears the door open and shut behind him, and then: “What the fuck's your problem?” 

He turns around and Laura is there, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. Mad Sweeney's, which he draws from behind his ear, is hand-rolled; he walks to her with a book of matches and she bends in, lets him light her first. The ember at the tip flares to life and her face is remade in the light of the flame, drawn into high bones and long shadows. 

“It’s nothin',” he says, “nothin'.”

Her fingers twitch around the cigarette, tapping out ash. “Okay, weirdo.”

He watches as she gives in to a sharp, slow shiver. He knows it isn't the cold outside that chills her. Regardless, he takes his jacket off (somewhat clumsily and with an abundance of swearing) and drapes it around her shoulders.

Laura doesn’t thank him. Instead, she'll pretend nothing happened and he’ll pretend not to notice how her eyes follow his hands as he takes a drag off his cigarette, that's how they work.

“It's just—”

She raises an eyebrow. “What? Speak up.”

“I have an idea, dead wife, but you can't fuckin' hit me for sayin' it.”

She rolls her eyes, folds her arms. “What?”

He stubs out his cigarette under his boot. He will not dance around her tonight; she will not be left making code out of dropped glances and freely given coins. “We could try resurrecting you with a kiss.”

“Shadow doesn't want me.”

“Not Shadow.”

She bursts out laughing, “Okay. Then a kiss with who? You? Why the fuck would I do that? Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Come on,” he grins, all teeth and bright eyes and shining red hair, so lively it's almost obscene. “You think true love's kiss making your heart beat again was just a one time thing?”

“True love's kiss—” she sneers, taking another drag off her cigarette, “Shadow's kiss, not just any old kiss from some asshole.”

He shrugs off the insult, “Alright, but don't say I didn't offer to help you.”

She goes quiet for a long moment. Then her lips part and her brows arch: a dare. “Fine. But it won't work.”

“I'm not promising anything, mind,” Sweeney says, lifting his hands innocently. “Just an innocent idea, love.”

Her cigarette burns itself down to the filter, in her hand. He is silent. Finally, she flicks the butt down, “Okay. But if you put your tongue in my mouth I'll bite it off.”

He stands closer. Towers over her, and yes she's short, but he takes up so much space it's almost intimidating. She looks up at him and behind the cloudiness, her eyes compel him forward. His painstaking restraint drops away and he closes his palms around her upper arms. She smells like cigarette smoke and death, her mouth parts as she looks up at him with wide, unrepentant eyes, a mouth that is the same shape as Essie's, as Eorann's, as it's always been. He knows how those lips would feel under his own, knows instinctively how they would taste, smoke-parched and warm with borrowed flame. He hasn't really thought about touching Laura; it would be dangerous even to stare without getting a fist to the jaw, but now—

Laura closes the space, cool bony fingers against his waist and cold lips pressing hard and intrusive against his. 

Something pools in the pit of her stomach and tingles through her like she hasn't felt in so long. She presses harder against his warm, wet mouth, trying to leach some of that life for herself. 

A kind of wonder, a brand new feeling like champagne swallowed too quickly, bubbles in golden bursts behind her eyes. Then, she feels it—her body pulsing, her heart nearly leaps from her chest. 

She pulls back, open mouthed and still on her tippy-toes, staring at him in disbelief. One hand flies up to her chest, pressing firmly enough to feel her heartbeat. “How the fuck—” 

Mad Sweeney grabs her hand, palm to palm, and all her skin flares to life, suddenly real against his. She nearly recoils, but he holds on. She feels every soft touch of his fingertips like a lick of flame. 

“What the fuck?” she breathes.

She clings to his hand desperately, overcome: all sensations in her body are distilled to the brush of his fingertips and the feeling of his warm palm against hers. His hand moves up her arm, up her achingly sensitive skin. She feels the warmth of her heart still pulsing in her ribcage, the rot wearing slowly away.

Laura frowns up at him. “You knew this would work the whole time, asshole?”

“No, no I didn't know for sure.” He shakes his head. “You and I have a very complicated history, Laura Moon.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, to be blunt,” he says, “You're such a cunt that I wasn't even sure if we would have a connection in this life—”

“A connection?”

“Unfortunate for both of us, I know—”

“This life?”

“You and I, dead wife, are...soulmates—or somethin', fuck if I know, haven't figured out why I keep runnin' into you—Ireland, here, you're always around, like a fucking parasite.”

“That is,” she searches for words, but she isn't sure what to say, as far as she can tell he has no logical reason to lie about this, but still: “That is literally one of the stupidest fucking things I've heard you say, and you've said some stupid shit—”

“Believe what you want, but there's something between us.”

Her heart twinges for a moment—residual ache from the kiss, she thinks.

“You can fight me all you want, but you can't deny that.”

She laughs, then. Laughs because—well, maybe, just maybe.

“You have feelings for me, dead wife.”

She snorts, “Fat chance.”

“Do you think your heart would've thumped like that if you didn't—somewhere, deep down, under all that rot—feel somethin'?”

She bites her lip and looks him up and down like she's sizing him up, and Christ, he looks at her like she's got him by the balls; she won't fight him again, not yet. She knows she could kick him and he’d roll over like a dog. She won't. 

Instead, she rolls her eyes and lets her neck fall back so she can pretend to be sick of looking at him. She opens the door to the motel room, “Come on, make me feel alive.”

For once, he follows her without argument.

+

Laura isn't exactly the type to take it laying down, but Sweeney is kneeling at the foot of the bed, easing her panties off slowly like he's being cautious and she can't find it in her to argue.

Normally, she'd snap at him or slap him and tell him to get on with it, but they haven't talked since the door swung shut behind them and for some reason she can't bring herself to break the silence. Any minute, she expects Sweeney to make a snide comment about it, Laura Moon with nothing to say? Isn't this a sight?--

But he doesn't.

In a way, the silence makes things easier, less real--he won't get called anything he doesn't like, and she doesn't have to remember who or what he is, really he could be anyone. No questions.

With his hands on her like this, nothing hurts. When he touches her like this, she is alive, her heart is beating, the decay has edged off. There are no maggots squirming in her gut, no chunks of flesh falling from her hairline; the y-incision on her chest has healed.

Her top and jeans are in a heap on the floor next to the bed. And Mad Sweeney, in his white tank and pants, suspender straps hanging around his hips, is kissing his way up her body. This close, he smells like tobacco and something else--something that she recognizes, even though she does not know its name.

Sweeney raises his head and his eyes are foggy with some sort of reverential desire. She realizes that he is saying her name; the name comes from his lips in the form of a blessing, a prayer whispered over and over in the dark. 

They shift, move together on the small space provided by the shitty motel bed: his hands on her waist, their chests pressed flush against each other (and fuck, she feels alive in her skin, so real, bursting up with everything, burning up with want--with need.)

One of his hands finds its way down between her legs, broad and warm and strong, igniting fireworks on her already burning skin. She is holding her breath just as he sweeps his fingers over her clit and her voice finally breaks free of her throat in a loud, choked moan, like a cracked hymn. He slides one finger into warm slick heat of her. Her whole body jerks around him and she curls her hand, pressed between their bodies, into the front of his shirt, tugging even though there is no way for him to be closer than he is.

He uncurls another finger into her, slick with spit, thumbing over her clit. She pulls him in, kisses his neck, rough and desperate, teeth scraping across the tender skin of his throat. Her hips are set in motion by his fingers. Hot, punishing warmth pushing fast into her.

His face is more serious than she's ever seen it, a muscle battering in his jaw. His breath is warm on her skin, and she can feel the rigid length of his cock pressing into her leg, but he doesn't move to free himself.

Instead, he slides his fingers in deeper and she half-strangles on a ragged moan as he moves them in her, closing her eyes tight, whole body pushing back against him. She lets herself sink into the bed, stretching her arms out to either side of the mattress to steady herself. Braced beside her cheek, his hand fists into the duvet beside her long tangle of hair. Her hips arch up to meet him, her heart beating in time with the rhythm of his fingers; she can feel it in her throat and the base of her stomach.

Sweeney moves with mad dedication--and she permits it. For the first time in a long time, Laura Moon is alive. She is alive and lying back and letting Mad Sweeney fuck her with his fingers. And then--

His grip on her bare leg tightens with a flutter and something inside her breaks loose in a spasm.

She comes hard and it feels like hurting, like splintering apart, a bruising force from her core; her eyes screwed tight and her body tensing up, ready to snap. The feeling is not gone in a few seconds but diffused like spray, a sick-sweet warmth bathing her whole body like a pain--and when she opens her eyes every inch of her body is shivering and boneless.

Maybe it was some sort of spastic reaction or something. Maybe that's all that was. Maybe Sweeney making her heart beat again was too much for her body to take. 

For a long moment, she lies in the dark with her eyes wide open and makes no sound.

Sweeney has rolled off of her--his long body laying half off the bed, half on--no longer touching her. But her heart is beating. Her heart is fluttering against her ribcage, pumping madly with aftershocks. The heat, the blood--rushing from her chest down, pooling between her legs.

She thinks she's never felt so alive--not even before. 

She takes a breath.

Sweeney looks up at her, eyes huge and hazel. His smile: knowing, mocking (worshiping, adoring--if she'd allow him to).

A heartbeat.

Silence around them. The night is holding its breath as she sits up, waiting for her heart to stop again. The silence throbs. Something nameless sits in the space between them, if she were a simpler woman she could call it fate.


End file.
